devfs vs. udev

Måns Rullgård
2003-10-07T12:38:33Z

I noticed this in the help text for devfs in 2.6.0-test6:

Note that devfs has been obsoleted by udev,
<http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/>.
It has been stripped down to a bare minimum and is only provided for
legacy installations that use its naming scheme which is
unfortunately different from the names normal Linux installations
use.

Now, this puzzles me, for a few of reasons. Firstly, not long ago,
devfs was spoken of as the way to go, and all drivers were rewritten
to support it. Why this sudden change? Secondly, that link only
leads me to a package describing itself as an experimental
proof-of-concept thing, not to be used for anything serious. How can
something that incomplete obsolete a working system like devfs?
Thirdly, udev appears to respond to hotplug events only. How is it
supposed to handle device files not corresponding to any physical
device? Finally, I quite liked the idea of a virtual filesystem for
/dev. It reduced the clutter quite a bit. As for the naming scheme,
it could easily be changed.

--
Måns Rullgård
mru@users.sf.net